


Song of Heaven

by ashes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Croatverse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-22
Updated: 2011-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashes/pseuds/ashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel knows that Heaven is closing -- hears the warning as the angels are called home. He endures in silence. (Set in pre-2014 Croatverse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Song of Heaven

Heaven doesn't close in an instant. The song begins a year after Detroit, quiet at first as it touches what remains of Castiel's grace. He's filled with the warning: _Return, Children, lest you be sacrificed with this world._

Disgraced, fallen, and out of favor from all his family, Castiel still receives the message, the last chance at Heaven's mercy – with one last impossibly cruel command. 

 _Leave Dean for dead._  

He's sitting on the Impala's passenger side, the smell of leather and greasy food pervasive as they rumble over the gravel county roads that lead to Bobby's salvage yard – and he has never hated Heaven more.

Dean looks over, his expression grim. "You look like you're about to pass out." 

Castiel remembers to breathe and shakes his head. "Headache," he lies.

***

 

The next time Castiel hears the song he's sleeping the backseat of the Impala, parked outside a laundromat where Dean is cleaning their clothes. He could hardly feel less angelic, dressed in a pair of ill-fitting sweatpants and a t-shirt -- and yet the song fills him, louder and more urgent, a sharper warning. _The gates are falling shut, Children; our work on Earth is done._  

Castiel thinks of the world around him, the catastrophes and attacks and illnesses that befall humanity as the Apocalypse rages around them. _No_ , he wants to reply (though its been long since his voice could reach Heaven), _our work is only beginning._

"You will die with them." 

Castiel fumbles to sit up, facing Anna where she's appeared in the front seat. He clears his throat. “You were killed.”

She shrugs, spares him a tight smile. “It would appear that I have been spared. Dad's getting sentimental in his old age, I guess. I don't believe you'll be so lucky a second time if you refuse to come home now.”

"It doesn't matter. I have sworn to protect them." 

"Them, or him?" She looks over her shoulder, into the laundromat where Dean is stuffing their clothes into an over-sized military surplus duffel. "I have felt the magnetism of Dean Winchester's soul, Castiel, but I have also seen the future that befalls humanity. Every human." She turns, leans forward to touch his cheek; Castiel jerks away. "Oh brother," she breathes, "his faithfulness will not endure. Do not place your life at his feet." 

Castiel cannot look at her, cannot bear the sadness in her eyes -- the sadness echoed in the song that fills his beating heat with despair. "I will not betray him. Leave, and do not return." 

She's gone in the blink of an eye, but the song endures for hours.

***

 

They spend the night at a nearby hotel, sprawled out with the lights off and the television on. Castiel clears his throat. He's on the opposite bed from Dean, who is watching some movie with the most pained expression. Their eyes meet in the electric blue light. “What will I become?”

Dean shudders and looks away. “A hunter. You've already got all the reflexes and the know-how – it's just gonna take some fine tuning.” He leans up with his elbows extended behind him. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

With an almost embittered smirk, with Anna's words ringing in his ears, Castiel says, “Of course, Dean – I'm yours to command.”

The silence stretches just a bit too long before Dean asks, “What happened to him, when you took the big plunge?” After a second he adds, “Jimmy, I mean,” as though Castiel didn't know who he meant. Castiel still remembers those last moments between death and life, when he had been recommitted to this flesh – without knowing what would become of him in it.

“He's dead,” Castiel replies. “God – ” An open wound – a reminder that he has been abandoned by his Father and all-too-soon his home. Castiel breathes deep the stale rented air. “God has taken Jimmy into his arms and spared him enduring the future.”

“Lucky bastard.” Another long, awkward silence filled with a commercial jingle. Dean reaches up with the remote and turns the television off. “You got more to live for than – than me. I'm nothing to put your faith in.”

“You're everything.” Castiel tries not to sound like he's falling apart. He almost tells Dean then, confesses that he has one last chance to return home, but he knows that Dean will only demand that Castiel abandon him. Castiel cannot, and will never – but he doesn't want to explain that to Dean. “I have lost everything in this world but your companionship. There's nothing else I have left to hope for.”

The silence is killing him, or at least making him wish he was dead. He still doesn't understand the finer nuances of human tact, and realizes too late that perhaps that was too much, especially for Dean, who feels like he deserves nothing but grief. 

“Come here.”

Castiel's stomach quivers, the low pitch to Dean's voice in the dark touching something carnal and raw inside him. He crosses the space between beds without asking why, The moonlight filters through flimsy curtains just enough to illuminate the shape of Dean, supine on the bed beside him.  Dean reaches up and pulls him close and kisses him so hard it takes his breath away. 

Without asking what this is supposed to be, Castiel stretches out beside him on the bed, every motion careful and deliberate. His heart beats so fast that he feels like it might explode, and as he yanks Dean in he loses himself in the moment. He kisses Dean's neck, his breath hitching as Dean runs his hands across Castiel's back.

“You're all I've got left,” Dean says hoarsely, hardly loud enough to be heard. Castiel stops, looks up at his shadowed face. “I'm going to look out for you.”

Castiel kisses him again, slower, more deliberately. Revels in the whiskey-and-cherry-pie flavor of Dean's mouth, the firmness of Dean's body against his own. “I'm staying to the end.”

Dean closes his eyes in the dark; his arms tighten around Castiel. “I know.”

***

 

The song reaches a crescendo, loud enough that Castiel sits up in bed, fully awake and panicked before he realizes why. His blood rushes in his ears, and he can't catch his breath. Dean somehow sleeps through this, snoring beside him on the bed. Castiel shivers, lurches to his feet and stumbles out the door to the hotel. Wind whips across his bare chest, raises goosebumps on his chilled skin. 

Anna is beside him. “Don't do this, Castiel. The apocalypse will change him. It will change you all.” She touches his cheek; he can feel the steady thrum of her grace against the withered remains of his own, the grace that he realizes is all but dead within his chest. He leans into her touch, deafened by Heaven's last song.

“I can't leave him,” he says, wishing he could control the fear binding his lungs and choking his throat. “It would be easier to die.”

“This is a forever decision. You don't have a soul – when you die... No one knows what will become of you.”

Castiel bows his head, and almost gives in when she removes her hand – when he realizes that this is the last time he will know what it's like to be in the presence of another angel. “He is my family now. I will suffer whatever consequence comes from this.”

There are tears on her face, and she kisses his cheek. “Goodbye, brother.”

The silence hits harder than the noise ever did – trumpets and drums and the voices of his brothers and sisters gone in an instant. The weight of his humanity hits him, the fall complete. The world is darker, this body heavier, and he almost crumples under the change. Leaning back against the wall, Castiel struggles to compose himself, hands shaking as he touches his face.

The door opens beside him. “What happened?” Dean's voice is tense and worried, and Castiel actually laughs as he realizes that Dean thinks this is a problem he can shoot at.

“The angels are gone,” he says, failing to keep his composure. “Heaven is closed.”

**Author's Note:**

> I loved the idea that instead of Heaven being like "BAM, DOORS CLOSED MOTHERFUCKERS" that they gave some warning to call the angels home -- and how Castiel would feel when he was left with this horrible decision and no way to talk about it. It took me forever to finish this (read: a month), because I still don't know how that scene in the hotel room, and am always terribly anxious about these things.
> 
> I didn't realize until I was running through this the second to last time that oops, Anna is totally dead. >__>;;


End file.
